1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge head that discharges a liquid.
2. Description of the Related Art
The number of discharge port arrays in an inkjet recording head (hereinafter also referred to as a “recording head”) serving as a liquid discharge head and the number of discharge ports per discharge port array have been increasing.
A large number of discharge ports enable faster recording, and a large number discharge port arrays corresponding to a large number of colors enable high quality recording. In addition, a plurality of types of discharge ports that discharge different amounts of ink may be provided. This also enables fast and high quality recording. Further, discharge port arrays for a plurality of colors may be disposed such that the order of colors of the discharge port arrays is line-symmetric with respect to the scanning direction of the recording head. This enables color inks to be overlaid in the same order between two directions during two-way recording, which enables fast and high quality recording. Moreover, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-55915, a plurality of discharge port arrays may be disposed such that discharge ports in a discharge port array are interpolated by discharge ports in another discharge port array. This allows the discharge ports to be disposed with a high density, which enables high quality recording.
Along with an increase in number of discharge port arrays per recording element substrate and number of discharge ports per discharge port array, however, the size of each recording element substrate may be increased to incur an increase in manufacturing cost. Such an increase is caused by the following reasons.
Normally, recording element substrates are manufactured by forming a plurality of recording element substrates on a single wafer and cutting the wafer into separate recording element substrates. In general, the wafer has a generally circular shape. Therefore, in cutting the wafer into rectangular recording element substrates, an increase in size of the recording element substrates reduces the degree of freedom in the layout of the recording element substrates, which reduces the proportion of the use area of the wafer to the total area of the wafer. In the event that a defect occurs in the recording element substrates during manufacture, the recording element substrates are discarded in the unit of chip even if the defect is local. Therefore, the amount of loss may be increased as the size of the recording element substrates is larger.
Thus, in order to prevent an increase in manufacturing cost, it is desired to prevent an increase in size of the recording element substrates.
To prevent an increase in size of the recording element substrates, a plurality of divided recording element substrates may be mounted on a recording head. In this case, a plurality of divided recording element substrates with the same configuration may be used, which enables a further reduction in manufacturing cost.
In the case where a plurality of recording element substrates with the same configuration are disposed such that discharge ports in discharge port arrays provided on a recording element substrate are interpolated by discharge ports in discharge port arrays provided on another recording element substrate in order to dispose discharge ports with a high density, the following issues may be encountered.
That is, since recording element substrates with the same configuration are disposed such that a recording element substrate is displaced with respect to another recording element substrate, electric contacts provided on the plurality of recording element substrates may be displaced between the recording element substrates. This may cause variations in strength of joint between the plurality of electric contacts and a plurality of leads provided to a wiring member. In order to reduce such variations, it may be necessary to adjust the lengths of the leads in accordance with the positions of the electric contacts.